Okay, allow me to start this article off with a disclaimer. I am a rabid Legion fan. I don't want to see the books get canceled but if it weren't for pure addiction, I would have stopped reading Legion a long time ago. But I'm not going to go into my f ull-fledged rant on the problems in the series currently ( we'd be here all day and you'd all be bored with me within three pages). I'm not a raging traditionalist. I miss the old Legion, but I don't want to relive the same stuff all over again. I enc o urage new characters and new plot lines, but I would like to see them well written. This issue is typical of Legion now, and suffers from poor writing and underdeveloped ideas.

This issue is an battle issue. This, admittedly, should mean lower character development_you know the thump-them-thump-them-now type of mentality. Battle issues generally result in minor who's-your-leader-now junk and dominate personalities tend to emerge. Well, this issue Thunder, a puppy dog like character, with essentially no desire except to get home (When she got home, she came loyally back to help the Legion. Where did this loyalty come from? Seems like come one snatched it out of thin air to me.), becomes a dominate hero figure. For starters, Thunder is an insipid creation who annoys me to no end. She lives in a perpetual blonde moment (no offense intended to any blonde readers) and for some reason, this issue she got brains, which contradicts her follow-the-leader-blindly-into-a-wall personality.

I believe that the choice of being responsible for a million deaths to save a trillion lives was an interesting concept with large possibilities for both plot and character development. Unfortunately, the writer chose the deux ex machina method. Thunder extracts all the knowledge she needs to stop the bad guy from ancient machinery (she's from even further in the future that the Legionnaires are). Thunder is given a pivotal role in the original plan (the one with the risk of killing innocents) , which she thusly ignores and does what she gets from the machine head. She does this WITHOUT telling the rest of the team what the snot is going on and somehow on panel the whole team realizes they've been magically powered.

Okay, so you have a whole "Legion of Super Superheroes" *brrrr*, and somehow they're not going to squander the power like the cackling maniacs trying to gain god-like status_yeah right!!! By the end, we have a situation that is more stable, but with still potential problems. Thunder, known as Little Miss Puppy Dog has bared her teeth and threatened someone. Ooooooh isn't she just soooo cute? And once again Legion has disappointed me, in terms of plot.

The art, however, was not much better. I generally love the art in Legion. It's one of the things that makes sucky plots and character development bearable. For some reason, the art in this issue reminds me of Image comic art without the big boobs. It is not attractive for the story they are trying to tell. The art is trying too hard to be serious for a story which has failed at that same attempt.

All and all, this issue is one of the reasons I'm glad the books are getting new authors, though I like the author of Legionnaires on a personal level and I feel he does well characterizing teenagers, I feel that this folly section has gone on for far too long.